Find it anytime online at cspan. Org. Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events future markers that guide you to news highlights. These points of interest markers appear on the righthand side of your screen when you hit play on selected videos. This time lentil makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided it washington. Scroll through and fended spent a few minutes on cspans point of interest. Announcer the Homeland Security undersecretary talked about challenges during a conversation with the Atlantic Council including challenges of gathering intelligence outside the u. S. , transparency, and oversight of the was intelligence gathering process and the need for resources and funding. We must value the gathering of intelligence that will protect u. S. Citizens from Cyber Attacks as well as the rest stemming from the u. S. Border while respecting the civil rights, liberties, and privacy in trying to the u. S. Constitution. There is no increasing skepticism in congress over how much authority should be granted to dhs for intelligence collection, and all of this will come to a head with the budget negotiations of the Upcoming NationalDefense Authorization act. Todays event will address intelligence challenges currently facing dhs and how ina will continue to support his growing missions had an Cyber Security and strategic competition with china. We are excited to be here today. This event is part of our future of dhs project hosted by the center for Defense Program and generously supported by deloitte. This project aims to advance performs an bipartisan policy efforts in order to improve the was department of Homeland Security. We are pleased to be coasting this event with our colleagues. The agenda today will feature opening remarks from the undersecretary, and then we will move to a moderated discussion with ellen gilmer. I would like to remind everyone this event is public and on the record. We encourage our online audience to join the conversation on twitter and using the hash tag future of dhs. Thank you for joining us on what will be a captivating conversation. I would like to turn it to scott marcus. Thank you, met. I am delighted to be here at the Atlantic Council, and on behalf of deloitte to welcome you to a lunchtime conversation about what we need to know to keep the country safe. It is worth one hour of your time today to hear an expert discussion about the intelligence challenges posed by a wide range of threats from terrorism to cybersecurity and beyond. To launch todays dialogue i have the privilege of introducing the honorable tim wins dean, the undersecretary of security and analysis at Homeland Security. His public life is unique. He served in both democratic and republican administrations. His expertise in National Security, counterterrorism and intelligence comes from his service as a federal prosecutor. As a general counsel and chief of staff of the fbi, as a First Assistant attorney general at the department of justice, and as Homeland Security advisor to president bush. Today he leads the information arm of it Organization Secretary mayorkas calls department of partnerships. Ina is the only agency in the Intelligence Community charged with providing intelligence to support state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and the private sector. Equally important is their role to employing the work of the Intelligence Community. Ina must execute its mission to walk carefully protecting the privacy, rights, and Civil Liberties of the American People while many inside and outside the government keep a close eye on what ina does. The rest of the American People of the American People have changed significantly since 9 11. In the private sector, local communities, and the public has become increasingly important. Let me welcome the undersecretary. Thanks very much for the kind introduction and for your explanation of ina and its operations, its responsibilities and its place in the National Intelligence enterprise. The two said it better than i could ever say it. But you did strike a lot of things that was important for us to focus on today. I have known my colleagues and friends from ina, grateful that you have us. Thank you for the service that you provide for being an influential voice that assesses the most critical global challenges for the United States working with our partners and our allies at a time when this is a really critical mission. A mission to jointly confront the challenges facing our country and alliances and a wide range of transnational threats. It is great to have an opportunity to talk about these threats, and particularly that the that focus on the homeland, but before i get into my remarks i would like to thank the Atlantic Council for two things. I would like to thank the council for the scholarship of tom morrick. Tom is a friend of mine who is among the ranks of the council, and he was the first person who reached out to me when i was nominated for this position. I will always be great for your guidance and mentorship and your scholarship in this area. You have written extensively on dhs and our operations at ina. I want to thank the Atlantic Council for one other thing, and that is my colleague. Ash was with the wall until recently. We brought him over to ina, and he is a powerhouse when it comes to local thinking and ideas, and we could not be more thrilled to have him, so thank you and i am not trying to rub it in, but maybe just a little bit, but i do want to say we are tremendously grateful that you share him with us and the American People. What i would like to do is start off by just remarking on the fact that next week is the anniversary of 9 11, and we need to take this opportunity both to remember the lives lost and all of the lives changed by that horrible day, but also reflect back on the lessons that were learned in that were taught by 9 11. That is particularly important for dhs. 9 11 was the founding of dhs. Dhs was warned for the very reason of the recognition of the need to harden the homeland again threats like 9 11. Ina was formed out of the recognition that there were two gaps that helped lead to 9 11 and allowed the terrible attacks to take place. One was that there was a gap in terms of intelligence work being directed at the homeland. Intelligence was considered foreign intelligence prior to 9 11. The effort of the Intelligence Community was focused on that. Intelligence by foreign actors taking place largely outside of the United States. 9 11 changed all of that. The First Time Since pearl harbor we had been struck inside the homeland, and that made it clear we needed to have an intelligence operation, a preventative operation that focused on the homeland, not just overseas. Congress set up a new definition of intelligence, shedding the term foreign intelligence and creating the term National Intelligence that included threats to the homeland, information obtained within the homeland to make it clear that was a new mission, and it was important not only to have that new mission but a new structure. There was a gap for that kind of structure. That is one cap ina gap ina was established to fill, and the other was making sure that we were providing the information that was needed by state, local, territorial, and tribal partners information they needed to harden their defenses against threats. That was information sharing process, and as a result we saw the lack of information being shared and lack of dots being connected prior to 9 11. To develop the intelligence process that will be focused internally in the United States and also be that bridge to the state and local, territorial, tribal, and private sector partners. To do so but as a traditional Intelligence Agency but it kind or Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Agency is focused domestically and because of that has limited authorities from the collection space. We can only collect overtly. We can only go to publicly available information to collect, unlike other intelligence agencies that have covered authorities for example. That is the way ina it was designed, and those where the gaps that we intended to fill, and for the first five or six years of its existence i watched ina develop under great leaders like Charlie Allen and pat hughes as this nation intelligence capability expanded and became a real force. I left government in january 2009. I had been an advisor from president bush, and i left on Inauguration Day and stepped back into Government Service just last summer, and it is been fascinating to see the progress ina has made. It has also been fascinating to see how the Threat Landscape has changed so dramatically in those years. Back in 2009 when i stepped out, International Terrorism was the main focus of the governments intelligence and enforcement work against foreign threats. Today that the right picture is much more diversified, and i want to take a few minutes to go through some of the major threats we are facing, all of which will be familiar to you. It is important to understand the threat picture, and that i will talk about what ina is doing to meet those threats. When i stepped back in last year that the threat picture changed dramatically, and nowhere more than in the terrorism space. Whereas International Terrorism was her primary threat, now the most primary, lethal sustained threats from terrorism is domestic violent extremism. One example of that being a tragic incident last may with the shooting of the supermarket in buffalo that killed 10 and wounded three by a shooter that was inspired by racist and antisemitic theories. We have seen threats against public personnel, judges, Law Enforcement officers. In january i Georgia State trooper was shot by an individual protesting the construction of a Law Enforcement training site down in atlanta. These domestic violent extremists on all sides of the spectrum are also radicalized and encouraged ruth social media platforms that enable them to build echo chambers, to cultivate groupthink share tactics and procedures thereby enhancing their region and impact of their activities. Domestic terrorism is the primary threat, but we cannot forget for terrorism remains a live and lethal threat. Organizations like isis, al qaeda, and others are still active, still recruiting, Still Holding honing social media messaging and planning operations, and there is no better reminder than that than the killing of someone as a reminder of the deep roots in persistence of that foreign terrorism threat. Lets talk about nationstate threats. They are not a new threat. They have been around since the beginning of the republic. We were created out of a conflict with another one, but they are becoming increasingly complex and serious. If you look back on a threat assessment produced back in 2006, nationstate adversaries was not mentioned until page 20 of the report. This years threat statement assessment devotes the first four pages. We see the threat primarily from china, russia, and around. Iran. China is a league of its own. I am not bashing china, but we have to look at the facts. The p. R. C. , the government as aggressively employed a whole of government approach to undercut u. S. Interdependence and technology to innovations, amplifying narratives publicly that sow doubt in our institutions, and targeting negative campaigns against u. S. Politicians, including one who ran for congress who had been a protester and demonstrations back in 1989. The Chinese Communist party as inserted agents into local Law Enforcement agencies and also engage in a range of u. S. International oppression by which they monitor, harass, and tried to suppress perceived regime opponents here in the United States. To meet this threat from the chinese government, secretary mayorkas has announced the beginning of a 90 day sprint defending dhs to focus on those areas of operations we can ramp up to meet this growing threat. So cyber for a second. On the cyber front, we faced a sustained right from sophisticated cyber actors as well as cyber criminal groups. In terms of estate adversaries, with the war in ukraine pitting us directly against russian that possibly increases targeting of the homeland with malicious cyber operations. With china have come up with sharpening competition between us in china and the possibility of a crisis over taiwan, we can expect the same from beijing. One concern being those powers are actively trying to reposition themselves within our systems in a way that they can then take advantage of that positioning if and when there is a crisis and they went to exploit that positioning to disable our readiness. The last threat i would like to talk about is transnational organized crime, and this is an enduring and serious threat to National Security. Particularly of threat from mexican organized crime cartels. They continue to wreak havoc on the American Economy and prosperity of our communities and the health of the american citizens. They have become increasingly sophisticated and are no extending their traditional narcotics activities into human smuggling and even taking over legitimate industries in the area of mexico that they control. Two particular cartels dominate todays drug smuggling market. These cartels are trafficking a range of illicit drugs. In just at the last year there were over 100,000 overdoses of americans who died, most of which were from fentanyl, often young kids who took those drugs not even realizing how dangerous it was. It is tragic and deadly serious. In 2023 alone so far cpb has seized over 9000 pounds of sentinel traveling across the southern border thanks to greatly ramped up enforcement activities across the border. If you assume a fatal dose is just 2 mg that is in a fentanyl to kill 2. 1 billion people. The threats from these drugs is serious and tragic, that will require a whole of government effort and a whole of society effort to combat it, and that means it will also require that we use all available tools. It will require using our tools of interviewing people down along the border could know about trafficking activities and getting that information out into the intelligence bloodstream and also require use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tool 702, which is up for reauthorization by congress, and as the Intelligence Community has been expanding is incredibly useful in the effort against fentanyl. Got to use all of those tools, and we need to maintain them. That is a brief overview of the threats we are facing. Let me take a minute to say what it is ina is doing to meet those threats. When i came on board the secretary pulled me inside aside and said he wanted to do a 360 review of what ina was doing and make sure we were doing everything in an optimal way to protect against these threats. To do that i brought in friends from the Intelligence Community, and they helped me do an overall review of the operations. Since we have some folks here who are as wonky as me when it comes to dhs procedures, i will walk through those organizational changes. I do that to give you an update on where we are, but also i think it is important to demonstrate ina is an organization in change, willing to change, and it is looking to change and improve, and you cannot say that about every organization. Certainly not every organization and government. The fact that this organization has showed itself so important so open to change is one of the reasons i am proud to be considered. We have taken a hard look at the organization. We have done a number of programmatic reviews. We have taken a look at our field operations. We have people around the country working with state and local partners, and another thing i will mention, there was a recent report. It was quite critical, it is sizing the center. Good report. I did not agree with everything in it, but it was good, provocative insights. Listen to a podcast between him and tom worrick, like two heavyweights facing off. It helps to show how you can have two very smart, reasonable people seeing issues very differently. We have asked for a field review. We have a contractor coming in to help with that review, and they are doing it right now. Another area we are doing an intense review is argument collection intelligence program. We interview people to get information related to Homeland Security. We put a pause on certain aspects of the Interview Program. We undertook a very indepth there was actually criticism in the press, and we responded to those criticisms, then we undertook a very indepth review that resulted in changes right now. We are doing the same thing in our open source collection space. We collect information off of the internet, social media and t